Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast, your source for policy rants and raves from Tech Freedom,

your Washington, D.C. advocate for the freedom to tinker and innovate.

I'm Evan Schwarzen-Straber, your host.

On today's show, the Internet in Africa.

Joining me to discuss it is Evelyn Smith, a research associate at the American Enterprise

Institute's Center for Internet Communications and Technology Policy. She is an editor of

Tech PolicyDaily.com, where you can check out some of her work. Evelyn, thank you for joining me.

Thanks for having me on the show.

So in the United States, the vast majority of people have access to high-speed internet,

and that includes fixed broadband that you get through your cable company or wireless options,

too.

And it's fair to say that a lot of people probably take that for granted because

there are still around 4 billion people in the world who don't have access to the internet,

many of them in Africa. And that's much of the focus of your work. So what's the state of play

of the internet in Africa today? Well, when we think about the internet in Africa, I think there

are three important things to consider.

The first is that, yes, there is a relatively low percentage of people who are currently online.

We're looking at about one in five people in Africa, 20%.

That's 15 percentage points below the average for the developing world as a whole, and a full 40 points below the US average.

But another point of optimism would be that there's a really high rate of growth in those numbers.

So over the next five years, according to GSMA, we can expect mobile broadband subscriptions in Africa,

in sub-Saharan Africa to more than double.

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